As shown above, Courtyard Editions is issuingtwo high quality, archival photographic prints, priced with the desire to make art works from the "LA Neighborhoods" project available to everyone. So
many so people have asked about acquiring prints from the work
that we have been doing together over the past few years. These are two very beautiful images that represent our unique look at LA.

A single section of the panorama used as the supporting layer of the collage for "213 - Washington Blvd." Polaroid T55

Artists Joe "Prime" Reza and David Cavazo, aka "Big Sleeps," are such legends, born of this disappearing LA era. These prints are a true fusion of photographic imagery and territorial street hand-styles. The imagery investigates LA and the secret, hidden sub-culture of graffiti writing, hand styles. "213 Washington Blvd. and Crenshaw " reflects aneighborhood abandoned to immigrants and people of color in post WWII Los Angeles that is now rapidly gentrifying. For those unaware, 213 was the original and for a long time, only area code in LA.

An early legend among street writers, now Joe "Prime" Reza is a painter who's works are held in the permanent collection of the Getty Museum and are exhibited in galleries world wide, Prime'snewest works can be seen through Jan. 17, 2017 at the LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in the exhibition "ROLLCALL" curated by Gajin Fujita.

Big Sleeps is truly a survivor of the streets that nearly swallowed him whole, streets that remain bound by intricate, spray-painted letter styles which act as a true code of survival called "the placa." Cavazo's paintings can also be viewed thru January 17 at LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA. in their "Rollcall"exhibition.

Studio van near Central Ave. in South Central LA on the very rainy night when we signed our prints

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Where Highway 1 and the 101 once intersected in Oxnard, CA there was this vintage Wagon Wheel Bowling. A relic of the post-war California car culture, neon sign signaling drivers on the highway, a huge, land is cheap parking lot. For me an old high school memory, my first car, driving up the coast.

The Wagon Wheel was a roadside pit-stop, a half way point on the way to Santa Barbara, Ojai or the first stop of several on the longer drive to San
Francisco. Now a much larger 10 lane super highway
replaces the old black and white road that dated back to the 1920s or 30s. The last time driving to Santa Barbara, I saw that the bowling alley was gone.

(right) Robert Graham, 1992 on vintage Type 55 Polaroid film (left) Steven Graham, 2016, curator of AFTERMATH, on The New55 Film

Robert and his son, Steven, are photographed at the same age by Jim McHugh

In the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, many the City
felt the need to DO SOMETHING.Robert
Graham, a sculptor who lived and worked in Venice, was one, and he had a
thought.What if I teach some youth, to redirect all that energy to something
creative and productive?Teach them the
art of making multiples and casting in bronze? At the time, Robert Graham was an artist
trustee of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and he proposed set
up a foundry workshop, and hire, pay and teach a group of at-risk youth to
produce a series of small bronze work to be sold to raise money for the
museum.The resulting work became known
as the MOCA TORSO (1992-95), and over the three-year period, the studio
produced over 3500 individual works, and it remains one of the most iconic works
by the artist, who passed away in 2008.

This
exhibition, AFTERMATH, brings together, works by Robert Graham, Juan Carlos Munoz Hernandez, Gajin Fujita, Alex Kizu aka “Defer”, Joe Reza aka “Prime”, and Big
Sleeps, along with Jim McHugh's large format portraits of the above mentioned artists on Impossible Project film. Also on display are McHugh's photographs of Robert Graham’s MOCA
Torso project in 1992 that were published in numerous magazines.

Big Sleeps

Juan Carlos Munoz "Heaven"

The exhibition runs through April 29, 2016as part of the Month of Photography Los Angeles.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

The Container Yard, LA's ground zero for graffiti artists, muralists
and historians of graffiti lettering, is celebrating their second
anniversary by hosting their first real Art Show, which opens tonight, Feb. 27. Art Show iscurated
by Vyal Reyes, artist and creator of the magnificent Wall of Eyes
featured above. For their first public exhibition, Vyal was tasked with
selecting a handful of new works from a variety of Los Angeles street
artists and photographers who have collaborated and contributed to the
evolution of the space over the past two years.

ART SHOW, the exhibition, offers a rare opportunity to glimpse behind
the graffiti painted walls of TCY, to see the work of my good friends,
artists Prime, Heaven, ShanduOne and many others. For me it's exciting
to be a part of this diverse LA artistic undertaking, but what is
far more satisfying personally is seeing this art work so justifiably
honored. To anyone in LA or visiting, please give yourself a gift, see
this show.